Seven.
That’s
the answer given by UNC professor Bart Ehrman in his recent book,
Forged. (The books, by the way, are Romans, I
Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, I Thessalonians,
and Philemon – all letters of Paul). And, while there is some
discussion about one or two more, the bulk of modern Biblical
scholars agree with Ehrman's list.
As
for the other twenty books, Ehrman divides them into two large
groups: anonymous works mistakenly attributed to Apostles (Matthew,
John, and Paul) or people remembered as apostolic companions (Mark
and Luke), and writings, some inside the New Testament (like
Ephesians, Colossians, Titus, the two letters to Timothy, the two
letters of Peter, Jude, and – in Ehrman's view – Acts, James, and
II Thessalonians), and others (the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of
Pilate, III Corinthians, the letter of Barnabas, or the Gospel of
Nicodemus, for example) outside the Bible altogether. For these books
Ehrman uses the modern word for writings produced by people
pretending to be someone else, in this case someone more
authoritative: forgeries.
Ehrman
cites a number of ancient Greek and Roman sources to show that
ancient people shared our concepts of forgery and plagiarism, and
that such writings, when detected, were almost universally regarded
as lies, and therefore illegitimate. Nor are such forgeries confined
to whole books of the New Testament: the ending of the Gospel of Mark
(16:9-20) was added later, as were John 7:53-8:11 (the woman taken in
adultery), and I Corinthians 14:34-35 (“Let the women in the
churches keep silent”). As Ehrman remarks, “Whoever added the
final twelve verses of Mark did not do so by a mere slip of the pen.”
The
philosophical and moral dilemma posed by the probability that so many
of the New Testament writings are what we now call forgeries is
obvious. Ehrman, in fact, ends the book with a (relatively short)
discussion of whether lying is ever justified, and he is clearly
unsettled by the knowledge that the majority of the books of the New
Testament are not what they are purported to be.
As
I see it, however, we Quakers may well have an easier time living
with the results of modern critical study of the Bible than do many
other faith communities. We regard the Biblical writings not as the
“last word,” but as the first – the first layer of experience
in our spiritual tradition, if you will. We know that such “nuggets
of truth” as we are able to mine out of our own lives, and share in
spoken ministry during meeting for worship, come from imperfect
individuals. This being the case, I, for one, think we can live with
the revelation that the Bible is very much a human book, as well as a
divine one. Who knows? For some of us, the new perspective may even
make it easier to appreciate the Good Book for the masterpiece –
or, rather, the collection of masterpieces – it really is.
